minnesota vikings

Holy shit, what a fucking fantastic weekend. Coming into Wednesday, I was thinking I was going to be seeing Rogue One and watching the Vikings on Sunday.

As it turned out, I wound up winning a pair of tickets to the Vikings/Colts game via my new employer. So: game in the new stadium, box seats, unlimited food/drink. Pimp ass tickets. I decided to extend the first invitation to my buddy Josh, whom I’ve known since my second sophomore year of college. He lives in Colorado and I don’t get to see the guy often enough. I was hoping he’d be home/in-town for the weekend. That wasn’t in the cards, but apparently, buying a last-minute plane ticket was. He’d be flying in on Saturday and arriving just before my Rogue One plans.

So the 2015 draft is over. The bulk of the pre-camp free agency seems to be over. We had another solid draft, we scored some interesting talent in free agency (Mike Wallace, Terrence Newman), and Adrian Peterson is still with the team. Combine those items with a defense that jumped from near-last in the league to 10th, and a young QB who was 2014 Rookie of the Year, and I think we’ve got an interesting season lined up.

What Could Go Wrong on Offense?

I think there’s three things (outside of the usual injury concerns) that could cause the whole season to go completely tits-up at this point.

1. Adrian Peterson loses his fucking mind…like in a way that makes the Twitter screed of late May 2015 look like a footnote in the long and storied history of Crazytown. He’s saddled with a fucking nutjob of an agent. Dogra talks Adrian into sitting out without pay. The emotional and operational turmoil caused by this completely derails the Vikings offense. And regardless of the quality of our coaching staff, this team would crumple.

2. Bridgewater plateaus or regresses. I don’t see this happening, honestly, but with every quarterback, their sophomore season should be cause for concerns. Last year, Teddy showed us some interesting stuff, especially down the stretch into the offseason. A sophomore season tends to be the marker for a QB’s career. A shitty first season happens (see also: Peyton Manning, others), but if the second season is equally shitty or worse, a QB is unlikely to be a long-term solution in the NFL.1

3. Matt Kalil shits the bed. This I can see as being more of a possibility than the two items above. After last season, in which he was horrific, and the season before in which he was mediocre, I can see Matt taking a big ol’ steaming dump on grandma’s heirloom comforter with a big Eeyore shrug…just before he locks those dopey ol’ eyes on you and says, “I’m only here by virtue of the depth chart. Oh bother.” Kalil doesn’t show up and Teddy is going to shitting through a second, freshly-torn asshole all season.